Blogs from Namche, Nepal, Asia - page 7

The day was greeted with much excitement. Today is the day we'd get our hot showers. Another day of pushing downhill at break(leg) pace. We would have covered another huge distance today and probably just as much vertical distance as yesterday, if not slightly more sense there was a lot of rise and fall. Once again I tried to keep pace with the breakaways and ended up living to regret it. My chin splints and knees were wrecked by the time we made it to Namche in the afternoon. Keeping with the secondary train would have been the better idea. Today we started off at Orsho and then hugged the river which drove us straight past Pangboche until we made it to Tengboche (4,000m) 3 hours later. Tengboche is where the "huge" buddhist monastery of this ... read more

Well after a very long walk uphill we've made it to Namche at an altitude of 3445m. I still haven't seen any Himalayan peaks as it's been cloudy and rainy the last few days but the scenery at ground level is still really nice. We followed a raging river the first couple of days that originates at Mt Everest. Today we had a "rest" day at Namche which involved a walk 400m to the Everest View Hotel which unfortunately today was the white cloud view hotel. it's at 3880m so its now the highest I've ever been and thankfully so far I don't have any signs of altitude sickness - only a slight headache this morning but a litre of water seemed to fix it. Namche is amazing - there's dozens of internet cafe's, bakeries, pool ... read more

Namche Bazar (Tage 2 und 3): Nebel Wir verbrachten unseren Akklimatisierungstag in Namche (3440 Meter) mit einer Wanderung zum beruehmt-beruechtigten Everest-View-Hotel; beruehmt wegen seiner Aussicht, beruechtigt wegen seiner horrenden Zimmerkosten ($200). Es wird in der Hochsaison vornehmlich von japanischen Reisegruppen genutzt, welche den Everest zwar sehen, sich aber nicht bewegen wollen. Gegen die Effekte der Hoehe wird in jedes Zimmer zusaetzlicher Sauerstoff gepumpt. Bei unserem Aufstieg durch Wolken und Nebel gerieten wir unverhofft auf einen verlassenen Flughafen. Die Piste wurde fuer Pilatus-Flieger (PC-6) konzipiert; da aber alle solchen in Nepal verfuegbaren Flugzeuge abgestuerzt sind, hat die Piste ihren Zweck verloren. Wunderschoen waren die unzaehligen Edelweiss. Zurueck in Namche besuchten wir den Markt und hatten anschliessend keinen Appetit mehr (wenn ... read more

Namaste! Thats "greetings" in Nepalese. After a long flight i finally arrived in Kathmandu which is a wild, wild city. So busy and it was just like a really large Khayalitsha. I didn't dare look up during our (thankfully) short car trip to the hotel. We pulled up outside a red brick wall with an armed guard who opened the door into an oasis which is the Dwarika Hotel. Hard to believe its in the middle of Kathmandu - every brick is handmade, all the windows intricate wooden carvings and each room unique and the size of a small house. I was thrilled to be there and took a shower, had our trek briefing and waited for Trev. He arrived and after a lovely dinner it was off to bed as we had an early start ... read more

Here we are, within spitting distance of the so called "Top of the World", and we have internet access. Owing to it's expense in parts remote, this blog entry will be a bit truncated from those in the past. Fortunately, there isn't too much to cover as most of the trip so far has been quite smooth. Let's begin! So, on Wednesday, Sara and I had the task of trying to wrap up all our loose ends at work and the final trip preparation, including picking up the rental car to drive and drop off at SFO. Not sure mine went quite as well as it could have (sorry Mik and Aaron), but Sara seems satisfied. After a hectic two hours of checking and rechecking our gear, we were off to the airport in plenty of ... read more